Watching media in 3D is coming to the latest laptop from popular manufacturers, Sony and Toshiba. Sony introduces 3D as a simple conversion by dedicating a button to view HD DVD or Blu-ray to 3D.

Whereas Toshiba is quickly working to get 3D available without the use of stylized glasses via the internal web cam. Viewing 3D content is certain to get tricky with multiple viewers, but likely, a single user will be gaming or editing, so glasses may be the most dependable method. The two-hue glasses are included and should be safely regarded as any other computer accessory as there is no guarantee that movie theater glasses will maintain functionality. Coupled with solid laptop design, both companies are putting this 3D in grabbing distance at $1,300 from Toshiba and from Sony, estimated around $1,700.

For what seemed like ages, wireless technology was either considered too slow or obtrusive for regular use in video workflows. Instead, users were forced to use USB cables, FireWire cables, and recently, to plug their media straight into the computer. While transfer technology has definitely improved over the years with FireWire 800 and USB 2.0, there is still a sense of somehow being chained down to the computer. I mean who wouldn’t want to skip an entire step in their video workflow? Enter Eye-Fi and Toshiba. When Eye-Fi introduced their wireless SD card technology back in 2007, they showed every SD card manufacturer that there was a real demand for wireless storage devices. So with Toshiba’s announcement to put together a standard for wireless SDHC memory cards, it finally seems as if the wireless data age has definitely arrived for both stills and video.

Getting rid of the cables would be great, but  in order to be a complete wireless storage solution, Toshiba will have to agree on not only a standard for SD cards (which work on AVCHD camcorders), but also a standard for CF cards (which work on DSLRs). The only real solution to this problem right now is to use a wireless SD card set inside of a CF card adapter. However, if companies can fit a wireless adapter into something as small as an SD card, can you honestly tell me that they can’t also fit one into the much larger form factor of a CF card? It seems like only a matter of time.

At the same time, if you’ve ever hauled around both a monitor and a camera at a run n’ gun shoot for a client, you know just how much of a hassle cables can be. They can get in the way of your controls, trip up both the operator and the client, and drag equipment precisely when you don’t want it to. That is why having an affordable real time wireless video transfer system would be the icing on the wireless cake for video enthusiasts. There are already wireless video transmission solutions for some camcorders, but unless you have a serious amount of cash just lying around and a really expensive camera, they are usually impossible to get. That’s why it would be a huge game changer if companies like Eye-Fi or Toshiba could make wireless storage cards that could monitor video. Maybe with the addition of Toshiba to the wireless storage market, we’ll start seeing these kinds of cards soon. Either way, it’s about time that other manufacturers joined the wireless media revolution. With the advances that result, we may finally be able to put away our cables for good.

Toshiba has announced a new, tiny SSD that will almost certainly find its way into next year’s flash-based camcorders, making them even smaller than this year’s already-small flash-based camcorders. They are also one of the first devices to use the new mini-SATA (mSATA) device connector. Sizes are 30GB and 62GB, and volume production will begin in October.

Why so small? An advantage to having such a small device is less weight and less power consumption (typical read power consumption is 1.3W, write is 1.8W.) This will probably lead to longer battery life for the end-user.

The advantages to using SSDs for video are many: they’re pretty fast, they’re more resistant to impact than a hard drive, the capacities are nearly as big (but their physical size is a fraction of that of a hard drive), and the cost difference is becoming less and less by the day. Makes me wonder when there’ll be a camcorder with an eSATA port, to get your video off to a computer that much faster? It’s probably inevitable, really.